Taphophobia
by Remy2
Summary: "She clawed her way out of her coffin...Isn't that right? Done it myself." Or, William, post-mortem.


  
TITLE: Taphophobia (1/1)  
AUTHOR: Remy Allegory (remyallegory@yahoo.com)  
RATING: PG13, for themes  
SPOILERS: None  
SUMMARY: "[She] clawed her way out of a coffin...Isn't that right?...Done it myself."  
DISCLAIMER: Count von Whedon owns it all - I'm just a poor serf.  
FEEDBACK: Please, God, no! No feedback! Please, I beg of you!! Heh heh...Just kidding. Flame me, love me, whatever.  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Sometimes I just sit down and left my fingers do all the work. Therefore, I take no responsibility for my actions or this story; blame the fingers, man. Taphophobia is the fear of being buried alive, according to [phobialist.com]. The Victorian-bell stuff in the opening I wrote from memory, so it might be a little off. Yes, I'm too lazy to do *actual* research...sue me.  
  
  
TAPHOPHOBIA  
  
  
He's suffocating.  
  
The Victorians were known to tie a string to the finger of the deceased. The string led from inside the coffin to outside the fresh gave, where it was attached to a bell. Someone from the church - sometimes a family member - would stay overnight after the burial. If the person assumed dead wasn't, they would wake in their box and clamor to escape, tugging on the string, which in turn would ring the bell. The guard - wide awake and well aware - would hear the tiny clinking noise and grab his shovel. You see, they didn't have the technology, the medicine or the science, to wholly confirm a person's death. Sometimes they were wrong. And sometimes, someone would die, and they'd come back.  
  
The box is small and musty. A scent lingers, radiates from the silk upholstery. The scent of death...No, of things worse than death. It smells like blood and bile and fear and hatred. He wonders when he began recognizing the smell of emotions.  
  
Then he panics. He rips the material, tears the thin linen until he finds solid wood, and then he starts banging his fist on the heavy mahogany that encloses him. It, too, has a distinguishable scent - moldy and archaic, like the books in the dark corner of the library that nobody wants, yellow and rotting. It smells like solitude. *That* he is familiar with.  
  
His knuckles are bleeding; the wood isn't even cracked. He doesn't think to scream. This is sheer panic that has stripped him of any ability to function logically. Instincts prompt him to struggle physically. He continues to pound on the sides of his box, first with his hands only, then with his feet. He attempts to break the box with his knee, but his leg will not bend so in such enclosed quarters, so he continues kicking, instead. He's glad he's wearing his good boots, his feet aren't even cold.  
  
But his hands are cold, and his cheeks and ears. It must be winter, he thinks offhandedly. Winters in London are always brutal. It must be night, he adds. It's awfully dark; he can't even see his own hands.  
  
Realizing he isn't getting anywhere, he pauses his struggles and lays still for a moment, taking a deep breath, savoring the cool air as it drifts past his tonsils and down his throat, into his chest. He takes another deep breath. It's not right; something's different. He still feels like he is suffocating.  
  
In this blind confusion he notices something is tied tightly around the index finger of his left hand. Using his right hand he follows its path until it disappears into a crack in the box. He tests its purpose, yanking his hand back and forth, from one side of the box to the other. He begins to wonder if the string will cut off the circulation in his finger. Wouldn't do to leave this place with an awful cold *and* gangrene. They'd cut his finger off; how would he write, hold his pen? He pulls the string off his finger, using a thin nail to get a hold of it. The string comes off and his nail breaks. He has a writer's hands, not at all callused or tough; his nails are effeminate, easily breakable. He's never had a hard day's work at the mill.  
  
His stomach makes an awful noise. It's growling at him. No, the sound is coming from somewhere deep in his chest, from a place he didn't know even existed, from a bad place.  
  
What have they done to him?! Who are They?! What's going on?! How long has he been here?! Why is he so hungry?!  
  
He remembers the stories, the recent accounts of murder and slaughter in the small villages surrounding London. The papers say the killers are extremists, heartless. They drown their victims, or smother them, whichever is more convenient, the authorities suppose. Then they bleed their victims, leave the bodies empty, in the most literal sense. All that is left are shells. Rotten, cold, purple shells with black eyes and shocked expressions carved into their faces, mouths forming an "O," as though they were taken by surprise, or maybe they died screaming for their lives, for salvation of some sort.  
  
He wonders if he's next. He wonders why they'd want him; he's never done anything wrong.  
  
Then he remembers the woman in the barn. Dark hair, pale skin. The pickpocketer, yammering about fishies. She said he was effulgent, he believed her. He wanted her. She was very pretty. Not at all like Cecily. This woman was dark and extremely thin and...just...very dark.  
  
And obviously very evil.   
  
She buried him alive.  
  
He starts pounding with his fists again, now more anxious than ever to escape this hole. His father taught him enough so that he knows how to defend himself if he should have to. He's never had to, before, of course; he's always one to avoid confrontation if necessary.   
  
He hopes, though, that this time he will have to fight for his freedom. Perhaps that will make him a man.  
  
He hears a noise from above. Maybe someone heard his call, someone good, an officer maybe! He doesn't even consider the other possibility.  
  
"Help me!" he cries. "Get me out of here!" The noise stops. "Please?! Help!"  
  
Seconds...minutes...hours later he hears something scrape the top of his box. Then he hears someone talk, "It's okay, William. I'm getting you out of here." The lid to his box is pried open, and the first thing he sees is Father Lucifer's face. He never did like Father Lucifer; it was so odd - a priest named after the devil.  
  
Then he is drenched with water and he tastes mud. It's raining; he is not surprised.  
  
Father Lucifer holds his hand out and he takes it, letting the old man help him up out of the coffin. "What happened to me? Did you get Them? Were They here? She told me she didn't want my money; I don't know why they'd do this to me!" He's standing on shaky legs, rambling and raving and he thinks he might be crying, but it's hard to tell in the rain.  
  
"Come on, William, we have to get you home." Father Lucifer tugs on his arm, pulls him towards the edge of the six-foot hole they're now standing in. "This has happened before. The bell, you rung the bell. That's how I knew. We thought you were dead."  
  
"You did this to me?"  
  
The old man grabs a hold of a clod of dirt and pulls himself out of the muddy hole. He kneels and helps William out. They stand on the edge of the hole, next to each other, in the rain, for quite some time.  
  
He starts breathing deeply again, hoping the curb the awful aching in his chest and gut. He tries breathing shallow breathes, then he holds it for nineteen seconds and takes another deep breath. Nothing. He's still suffocating.  
  
"You did this to me?" William repeats, glancing at the old man. His eyes are closed tightly.  
  
"We thought you were dead," Father Lucifer restates in a thick, collected voice.  
  
"Oh," William mumbles. Then another sharp pain rips through him, from his toes to the space between his eyes, only this time it's not really pain. It's white-hot and searing and almost pleasurable and he knows they did something horrible to him, something horribly wrong. Then something more primal and urgent and more angry than anything he has *ever* felt fills his throat and ears, and he feels something change, something *physically* change. His lip is suddenly bleeding, and without thought he starts sucking out the blood, savoring the coppery-tang that he imagines is greatly akin to heaven. It travels over his palate, through his esophagus, following the trail that the musky air he took in earlier left.  
  
He swallows greedily.  
  
He's not suffocating, anymore.  
  
"What's...what's wrong with me?" he asks, striding slowly -- predatorily, instinctively -- towards the old man in his black suit and white collar, stained brown by the rain and mud. He stops within an inch of the old man's neck. They are the same height, William notices. He sniffs the man's shoulder, very quietly, imperceptibly.  
  
Father Lucifer opens his mouth to speak, but the only sound that comes out is a strangled cry. He opens his eyes, his dark hazel eyes, eyes of an old man, and those brown-green eyes meet yellow for a split second, before everything is black. He shatters into a million pieces and he feels the teeth in his neck, hears the rip of the flesh, the sucking sound, and somewhere his mind registers the sound of his own screams over the thick pounding of his heart and the heavy rain on stone. The mud on his collar disappears behind a blanket of sloppy red.  
  
The body is just a shell now. And William understands. He pushes it into the empty grave -- *his* empty grave -- and starts kicking dirt back in; then he grabs the shovel, and he doesn't stop working until the hole is filled. 


End file.
